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The clinical encounter with young children, whether their development is harmonious or marked by various types of distress, gives most importance to the urgent need for them to manage to inhabit their body, for them to appropriate it subjectively and construct its representations. This idea, generally accepted by scientific milieux that focus their interest on the subject, still poses an important number of questions both on the terminological and theoretical levels. The sometimes confused reference to heterogenous categories, the telescoping of words that appear similar—even though they are far from equivalent—(such as body image and body schema, to cite only these two), because they echo the complexity of the problem that is addressed, tend to confound researchers and clinicians and need to be clarified. The author proposes a non-exhaustive retrospective view here concerning several theoretical models (particularly psychoanalytic ones) so as to better convey them and put them into perspective. In order to do this, these different elements will be regrouped in the form of several domains (body schema, body image, the body self, psychic envelopes. . .) all the while keeping the idea of a plural interpretation of what can be called the emergence of bodily representation as a common thread. Several propositions will be advanced in conclusion in order to prolong reflection on this subject and to open up other possible paths of study.